Trade skills

Trade skills are passively used in towns by heroes who are dealing with traders. Those sneaky traders often manage to rip off the unsuspecting heroes so this type of skill is quite handy for such occasions.

When a hero uses a trade skill, the trader is forced to give them a certain discount on whatever they are buying, or alternatively a certain amount of gold extra when the hero is selling things. Either way, the hero manages to gain more gold than they usually would. Both of these are decided by this formula:

Recent experience has shown it seems 20% is the base amount used from published diary updates. Deities are advised to pay close attention to be certain.[note 2]

Cost-benefit analysis of upgrade

The "benefits" of upgrading a trading skill are almost invariably not worth the training costs. While the 31 percent increase in loot yield of obtaining the first level has its merits (especially since it's free), the increase to level 2 is only 0.76% higher[note 3]. Thus, at level 2, a hero would have to sell items worth 131,000 at base value in order to break even with the 1,000 gold of training cost versus staying at level 1. In other words, it is quite unlikely for your hero to have recovered the costs of training previous level before paying to upgrade again.

Conceivably, by skill level 10, a hero may have to sell a completed temple's weight in gold to justify the amount spent on tuition for each increase! (See table below)

Level

Additional cost to obtain level

Yield increase

Additional sales to break-even vs. unskilled

Additional sales to justify last upgrade

Cumulative sales to recover last upgrade in gold bricks

1

free

31.000%

2

1000

0.763%

3125

131000

44

3

1500

0.758%

4545

198000

110

4

2000

0.752%

5882

266000

198

5

2500

0.746%

7143

335000

310

6

3000

0.741%

8333

405000

445

7

3500

0.735%

9459

476000

604

8

4000

0.730%

10526

548000

786

9

4500

0.725%

11538

621000

993

10

5000

0.719%

12500

695000

1225

11

5500

0.714%

13415

770000

1482

12

6000

0.709%

14286

846000

1764

13

6500

0.704%

15116

923000

2071

14

7000

0.699%

15909

1001000

2405

15

7500

0.694%

16667

1080000

2765

16

8000

0.690%

17391

1160000

3152

17

8500

0.685%

18085

1241000

3565

18

9000

0.680%

18750

1323000

4006

19

9500

0.676%

19388

1406000

4475

20

10000

0.671%

20000

1490000

4972

21

10500

0.667%

20588

1575000

5497

22

11000

0.662%

21154

1661000

6050

23

11500

0.658%

21698

1748000

6633

24

12000

0.654%

22222

1836000

7245

25

12500

0.649%

22727

1925000

7887

26

13000

0.645%

23214

2015000

8558

27

13500

0.641%

23684

2106000

9260

28

14000

0.637%

24138

2198000

9993

29

14500

0.633%

24576

2291000

10757

30

15000

0.629%

25000

2385000

11552

Of course, there is no way to stop your hero from "investing" in their skills other than to keep the amount of coins in hand low, such as by converting gold coins into gold bricks via encouragement before they can spend it. Moreover, having a trading skill is probably still better than not having one at all, as demonstrated by the third column.

Footnotes

↑Assuming the admins design the game fairly, the formula for should be as discount price = normal price / ( 1 + (30 + skill level ) / 100 ). By the multiplicative property of equality, this formula would result buying skills being equally beneficial selling skills at any level. If instead the formula were discount price = normal price * (1 - (30 + skill level)/100)) then a hero with a discount level of 70 could theoretically buy all items for free (under the former formula, a level 70 buying skill would equal to a 50% discount).

↑Mathematical comment: As per note #1, a discount with a base of 30% using the bold formula in note #1 would, at skill level 7, appear like discount of base 20% under the (probably incorrect) italicized formula.